Morning Coffee: Hedge fund recruiter's $750k pay for ‘some consulting work.’ Big Four firms inventing reasons for firing people
Working as an external recruiter for a hedge fund can be lucrative. Working as an internal recruiter for a hedge fund might be easier and more lucrative still.
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Bloomberg reports that Gina Strum, who was a business development professional at Avenue Capital Management, which operates as both a hedge fund and private equity firm, was paid $750k for 'some consulting work' in 2019. It's not clear what Strum's consulting work consisted of, but it seems to have been very worthwhile.
Strum's lucrative gig follows suggestions earlier this year that the pay for business development professionals who work in front office recruitment for hedge funds goes from $300k for juniors, to seven figures for more senior staff, many of whom are former managing directors in banks.
Business development professionals would argue that they are more than mere recruiters. As well as the relentless pursuit of new portfolio management talent, their role involves lining up new people to carefully coincide with the deployment of new capital and replacing those let go. It can be a thankless task, especially at funds with high staff turnover.
Strum's LinkedIn profile says she was a managing director at Avenue Capital and that she worked there for eight years. However, Bloomberg says she was only there for four and that she left in 2013 with a severance package after threatening to make false accusations against the firm. Strum's interlude in business development at Avenue Capital wasn't therefore entirely typical. - She's now embroiled in a court case involving the fund's founder, Marc Lasry, whom her lawyer says has attempted to control and harass her. Lasry, in turn, alleges that Strum sent him videos of herself wearing a revealing tank top and says she displayed obsessive behaviour towards him for years after she left. Bloomberg says the $750k for consulting work in 2019 was dispensed partly in an attempt to keep Strum from making her "false accusations." It didn't work: Lasry claims Strum subsequently attempted to extort another $50m from him. She denies this. Hence, Lasry and Strum find themselves in the court, and their dispute has become public.
It's not clear what Strum plans to do next. With the Avenue consulting work presumably shrivelled dry, she could always try external hedge fund recruitment instead. As we noted earlier this year, one London hedge fund recruiter is paid $600k (£461k) each time it finds a new portfolio manager who stays more than a year. It's good money, if the PMs stay.
Separately, Big Four firms are cutting staff and their reasons don't always seem logical.
The Financial Times reports that EY has unexpectedly ejected people who attended multiple simultaneous training sessions during its “EY Ignite Learning Week” four weeks ago.
The training sessions involved such interesting topics as, "How strong is your digital brand in the marketplace?” and “Conversing with AI, one prompt at a time”. EY employees were obliged to participate in pursuit of continuing education credits. EY says attending two sessions at once constituted an "ethical breach". Affected staff say they were simply multitasking.
Meanwhile...
It helps to have a househusband if you want to succeed on Wall Street. Suzanne Donohoe, a former Goldman Sachs and KKR Partner, has her husband, Matt, a former emerging markets trader. “The prototype of the person you are competing with, the people in nearly all of the successful positions, have a stay-at-home partner. The disheartening part of the message is somehow you can’t achieve if one parent isn’t at home.”(WSJ)
JPMorgan rehired scientist Sarah Kapnick to advise on climate change. Kapnick worked at JPMorgan until 2021 when she left to work as a senior scientist in the Biden administration (Reuters)
Founded by secretive poker playing options trader Jeff Yass, Susquehanna International Group is the world's biggest prop trader and employs 3,000 people. Yass's son Doug is now building out a team of quantitative sports researchers in Dublin and at its Pennsylvania headquarters. (Financial Times)
The top 10 UK law firms are now charging an average of £449 per hour in 2024, compared with £321 in 2019. (Financial Times)
Black bankers can't find jobs either. “It’s a world away from four years ago. I understand it’s a tough job market and roles might not be immediately available, but the response has been underwhelming. If banks are as serious about hiring Black professionals as they claim, they should at least want to talk to me.” (Financial News)
Germany loved the four day week. 73% of people who went through the trial wanted to persist with it. (Bloomberg)
The Vessel in Hudson Yards has opened again with anti-suicide barriers. 😢 (Gothamist)
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